


With Red In Their Eyes

by StarlightLion



Category: Naruto
Genre: Complete, Don't fuck with Team Seven, My Strength is Your Strength, Oneshot, Stream of Consciousness, Team Seven is possessive of each other, Team Seven lives, This is basically the whole time period in like 5k words, Your Burdens are My Burdens, by the by
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:01:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23101384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightLion/pseuds/StarlightLion
Summary: Uchiha Sasuke leaves Konoha in search of power.He does not leave alone.Complete.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 172





	With Red In Their Eyes

The first time Kakashi loses his family, he tries to forsake emotional attachment entirely; it can only bring him pain. He festers in honour and rots for glory, and it leaves him defenceless when a new family grabs onto his heart.

* * *

The second time Kakashi loses his family, it nearly kills him.

The day that Obito dies, Kakashi breaks a part of his heart that he hadn't even realised he had; he gains an eye, and loses a friend, and will never be rid of the shadow of it. The day Rin dies, he hides in his lonely home and cries himself sick; it takes every scrap of willpower he has not to taste his own Chidori. The day that Minato-sensei dies, he's forced to preserve his own life and  _ watch,  _ and he suffers in silence so much rage that he does not speak up to protect the Uchihas from persecution, and he cannot even bring himself to meet the mewling worthless bundle that is all that's left of his second family.

* * *

The third time Kakashi loses his family, he's still reeling from the nauseating obliteration that Itachi has wrought, and can barely even process his release from the Anbu. What remains of the team he no longer captains gathers to say goodbye to him, and then leaves him to his grief. He doesn't speak to them again for years to come.

* * *

The fourth time Kakashi loses his family, he doesn't give up so easily, and when he fails to save them - again,  _ again,  _ and he's  **so fucking weak** \- it sends him over the edge.

* * *

It's a cold night when Uchiha Sasuke decides to leave. The Curse Mark is heavy and burning on his neck , an itch that he can't scratch and isn't sure he wants to - but it sings with power, and the promise it offers is more alluring than he can bear. There is strength in teamwork, he's come to believe that with his whole heart. Kakashi-sensei has not lied to him.

But there is not enough. And however dark and dangerous this path looks to be, it is lined with power and slick with blood. It is the one that he  _ must _ walk - even if, at times, he's going to have to swim.

It's a cold night, and yet when Sasuke body flickers behind her, the proximity of Sakura's body is shockingly warm. Perhaps that's why he does it. The kunai is in his hand before he can even consider it, the blade touching Sakura's throat in the sweetest kiss he will ever give her.

She doesn't flinch.

"... Are you going to kill me?" she asks, and her voice doesn't waver. She doesn't even sound scared - Sasuke isn't sure he's ever heard her sound so calm.

Revulsion floods out under his skin as memories flash, and suddenly he can't unsee himself as his brother, can't unsee the knife in his hands like it's Itachi's blade, as if it's his family all over again whose throat he's threatening to cut. Perhaps, he thinks, it is.

The kunai clatters to the ground, cutting into the collar of Sakura's dress as it goes; when she turns back around, there's a tiny dribble of blood where the sharp edge has caught her skin beneath it. She doesn't flinch.

"I know I can't stop you from leaving," she says. There's a depth of pain in her eyes that Sasuke never thought she'd understand. "And I don't know why you have to. I don't think I can. But I'm coming with you."

And it's not a question. She isn't asking for his permission. Suddenly, Sasuke can see their paths laid out. If he stops her now, then perhaps she will be forced to stay - if he incapacitates her, if he forces her to remain. She'll be safe with Kakashi-sensei, ensconced in Konoha until she's stronger. But there's a hard steel in her face that he recognises all too well; if he leaves without her, right now, she will follow him. She'll follow him to the ends of the earth. She'll follow him no matter how deep into hell he descends.

He doesn't know how to categorise the emotions that swell up to replace the guilty nausea. Gratitude, maybe? It's been an age since he's felt grateful to anyone. "... Thank you, Sakura." He says it quietly, so quietly that she tilts her head ever so slightly, trying to make sure she heard it at all.

In another flicker of motion, he moves. If he knocks her unconscious, she won't know where to go to find him. It's the safest path. For all of them.

It doesn't even occur to him that she might fight back.

His attack is met with a deflective block so casual that it almost seems contemptuous. Anger lights an emerald fire in her eyes as he stumbles, unprepared for any reaction. "I am not the  _ weak _ one," and this time her voice is a snarl. "I won't let you just ignore me, and I won't let you go alone." Just as quickly, the anger is gone - but she doesn't relax her combat stance.

And just like that, the illusion of choice shatters. Sasuke knows he has to do this, he knows that leaving Konoha has been inevitable for six years. And now, he realises, he isn't going to do it alone. He never was.

Kakashi-sensei was right, all those times he said it. Team Seven's strength is his strength. Sakura's strength is his strength.

"... Okay."

For a moment, it seems Sakura hasn't heard him - and then her eyes widen and fill with tears again. Sasuke almost regrets it, but she sucks in a sharp breath, and she doesn't cry. He thinks about the disdain he's shown her, about how weak he's assumed her to be. About how right now, he's no longer sure he could knock her out even if he tried again.

Watching her swallow back her emotions and square her shoulders, Sasuke decides that maybe, she's not weak after all. Maybe, she's  _ deceptive. _

He can work with deceptive.

When Sasuke leaves Konoha in search of power and vengeance, he does not do so alone.

* * *

Naruto catches them, as he always, always does, in the Valley of the End. They stand opposite him and face him together, and his Will of Fire falters.

He is prepared to drag Sasuke back onto the path he believes is right, even if he has to break every bone in Sasuke's body to do it - but Sakura stands with him, and he with her, and for the first time, Naruto's conviction wavers.

Sakura lets them fight. She watches while boiling red chakra seethes from Naruto's every pore and his eyes turn crimson to match the swirling Sharingan that Sasuke levels at him. She watches while writhing black and purple overtake Sasuke's entire body; she narrows her eyes when the Curse Mark spits dark chakra and Sasuke's body is transformed.

She watches, with a sick curiosity, when she sees that its influence has turned Sasuke's inherited Chidori into a dazzling, beautiful purple.

_ Their strength is my strength,  _ she thinks, while her teammates clash, and in the end, when they're panting and bleeding and Naruto looks as crazed as Sasuke, she walks calmly out onto the surface of the water and steps between them.

They come to a halt, two Konoha hitai-ite merely inches from each outstretched palm, and stare at her as if she's insane. The air is filled with the sound of screaming sparrows as Sasuke holds his discoloured Chidori - on her other side, her hair is tugged towards a faintly red-tainted Rasengan that swirls restlessly in Naruto's palm. Slowly, she lowers her hands. Then, eyes on Naruto, she steps delicately to Sasuke's side.

His eyes widen, and the red bleeds out of them as his Rasengan winks out. "Why?" he asks simply, and - curling her fingers around Sasuke's, gripping harder when he tries to tug away - she extends her other hand towards Naruto.

As soon as she opens her mouth to speak, Sasuke's Chidori dies down to silence. "Come with us. You can't bring us home, Naruto. But you belong with us."

She firmly believes it. They're a team. They're a  _ family.  _ They can't let Sasuke do this on his own, but nor can she and Sasuke abandon Naruto, like he's been abandoned and betrayed so many times before. For a moment, there is perfect silence. Then, chin held proudly, Sasuke extends his hand towards Naruto as well.

Naruto's will crumbles.

The Valley of the End cracks with thunder and rain, and three Konoha hitai-ite are marked through with long scratches, and carried out on furrowed brows.

* * *

There is no evidence left for Kakashi's dogs to track by the time they make it there. He finds craters and slashes in the rock, the head blown off one of the enormous statue memorials, and he finds no trace of the genin he's lost. That there are no bodies gives him hope that they are not dead - but his scream is drowned by the thunder storm around him, and when the second statue cracks clean in half there is no way to distinguish between the lightning in the sky, and the lightning in Kakashi's hands.

* * *

A year passes. Kakashi is reinstated into the Anbu by a reluctant Tsunade; she keeps her briefs with him as short as possible, and tries not to flinch when he raises his voice.

His team remains in a state of constant flux. For every instance he saves their lives, there are ten more in which he inflicts pointless slaughter on everyone else. He is never called  _ Friend-Killer _ again - but his taste for mercy is bitter and soon even  _ Copy Ninja _ is a forsaken moniker for the single deadliest assassin that Konoha has to offer.

Eventually, his position as a Captain is stripped from him entirely, and it does nothing but fuel his rage. The friendship he'd relied on so heavily becomes a cage around him, and he shatters each and every bar of it. Gai alone has the spirit to withstand the abuse Kakashi hurls at him to drive him away -  _ They're better off without me _ \- and everything Kakashi touches turns to ash and death anyway. Even Gai finally gets the message, written in pain and blood and a two-month stay in the shinobi end of Konoha hospital.

He snaps, one morning, and trashes his apartment. Nothing survives. He walks out across the shattered glass of two precious picture frames, and he doesn't look back at the set of bloody footprints that he leaves behind.

The repair costs come out of his paychecks. He doesn't care - he doesn't even notice. Kakashi is assigned a unit buried amongst a hundred other Anbu, and it means nothing. He's on mission so often that he barely even sees it. Occasionally, Tsunade offers him A-class jobs - he only accepts when there are no S-class missions available.

Kakashi knows that the path he's walking can only end in ruin, and he sprints down it anyway. Fear of his name spreads through the other Villages in bloodied whispers and stolen breaths - when it reaches the civilian populace, it races across the nations like wildfire. Eventually, his name is but a footnote; he is Konoha's  _ Bloody White Lightning  _ and he is left in isolation. He gets more job requests than ever.

He prefers it that way.

* * *

The first time that they hear of what's become of their sensei, they're fourteen and sparring under Orochimaru's watchful eye, and Kabuto interrupts them. He knocks away the triple attack with a scowl and a surge of chakra, and Orochimaru just chuckles.

If the three had wanted Kabuto to die, they had only to really try.

"One of our outposts near Fire Country has been wiped out," Kabuto reports, and the three perk up in attention, ears pricked. "These are the images of what was left."

They scramble over when the stack of pictures is strewn across the ground in disgust. Kabuto and Orochimaru continue to discuss the event between them, but they are ignored. Naruto picks up one photo with clawed fingers and studies it closer with eyes permanently shot through with red. One fang is bared in a disgusted sneer. "This was done for  _ fun,"  _ he growls, and deeper in his chest comes another growl only he can hear; Kurama hasn't spoken  _ words _ in months; his will - broken as it is - has been so closely wound to Naruto's carefully nurtured fury that he no longer needs to.

Sasuke offers a cold  _ Hn _ in response, studying a different photo with Sharingan alight. It's a rare moment that he deactivates them, nowadays. Naruto can't even remember the last time he saw those eyes black.

Flipping through the rest of the pictures, Sakura hums thoughtfully. Her chakra vibrates in the air around her, and where she touches them, the photos begin - ever so slowly - to warp. "And everything being researched there was accounted for?" she calls out, heedless of the conversation she's interrupting. Orochimaru chuckles again while Kabuto glares quiet kunai at them.

"Everything was destroyed, but accounted for," he confirms, amusement in every word. Sakura hums again, and goes back to flipping through pictures.

A few moments later, she's done; she lets them flutter back to the floor, warped beyond recognition by the sizzling chakra at her fingertips. Naruto passes her the one he's holding, and when she takes it to ruin it too, he lunges at her with an unrestrained snarl; it's not a noise that could ever be called human.

Sakura grins in delight, letting Naruto bowl her over. Where she hits the floor, it cracks into a fragile spiderweb, and then Naruto finds himself thrown straight up into the ceiling in retaliation; chakra bubbles against his skin, and a moment later he feels the swirling mixture of his own chakra laced with Kurama's seep out around him in a cloak. What burns Sakura has inflicted soothe, and begin to heal.

He clamps down on Kurama's bloodlust, channels it and sharpens it until it's a blade that he can use for himself; claws dig into the ceiling where he's sticking, and he refocuses down on his team. Kurama rumbles wordlessly.  _ But your strength is my strength,  _ Naruto purrs back in their mind, and a second later he's launching himself down at Sakura again.

He feels rather than sees Sasuke slipping away. The fragment of Kurama's chakra that exists in Sasuke's body coils with a shared consternation, and rebounds from him to Sakura to Naruto and back. A weaving tail forms out of Naruto's chakra shell as he falls - meeting his gaze, Sakura braces herself and forces her own chakra out through her palms, holding it tightly while it condenses from a vague cloud into a gleaming ball, darkening from blue to purple in moments. Naruto feels the tug on Kurama's power like her fingers down his spine, and releases it to her.

The explosion of chakra and dust that they create on impact is enough to blind everyone for a minute, and the whole underground base shakes. In the distance, echoing, he hears the shouts and whines of Orochimaru's panicked prisoners.

Sasuke slips away, and Naruto and Sakura don't hesitate. His absence will be noticed, but all they have to do to protect him is put on a good enough show that Orochimaru won't go looking.

They line each other up, and they go again.

* * *

That night, they huddle up together in Sasuke's room, and Sakura summons a snake to keep watch; for as little as they now get along, Naruto has refused to void his contract with the toads, and Sasuke prefers the majesty of his hawks to the sly creatures Sakura bound herself to.

It makes sense, he occasionally broods on it. Sakura is deceptive. Her favourite summons winds up her arm and whispers in her ear before slithering away to watch their backs. A small thing, the snake is - tiny and mottled black-brown, utterly unremarkable in every way. Orochimaru mocks Sakura's choice of summons every time she refuses the service of the enormous serpents at his beck and call - and he never suspects the source when mysterious poison makes its way into his food.

It's never enough to seriously hinder him - they've never met someone with as high a resistance to toxins as Orochimaru - but it's always fun to watch him suffer a little, and watch Kabuto fret.

"What was it?" Sakura asks once they're properly safe and cozy. They remain close together, and Kurama's chakra hums across their proximity with a soothing vibration, but they're careful not to weave their limbs. They live in a snake pit, after all, and they must be ready. One day it will come down merely to who reacts the slowest.

Sasuke pulls out the picture that he took from Kabuto's pile, shows it to them. "Chidori marks." They don't need the explanation - they've seen what Sasuke's done enough times to recognise it on sight - but it settles between them anyway.

"So it was Kakashi-sensei." It's sheer stubbornness that they still call him that. Orochimaru scowls every time he hears it.

Sasuke nods. "I talked to one of our contacts. They're calling him Konoha's  _ Bloody Lightning." _

Sakura hums.

"He didn't take anything. He wasn't after the experiments." They glance at Naruto and his eyes narrow. "... So those rumours were true."

"We should have taken him with us," Sakura says, and they don't give her any verbal response. Two sets of red eyes look away. It's not the first time she’s expressed the sentiment - and it won't be the last. Kakashi would have knocked them senseless for trying to leave, but nobody voices the fact.

It's Sasuke who eventually breaks the silence. "It's too late now."

And Sakura ruins the photo, and they curl together to sleep away the guilt. Kakashi is strong enough to protect himself - they take turns keeping watch throughout the night, even as a little brown snake hides outside against the wall, and set aside the burden of saving Kakashi for another day. Another week, another month, another year. They have shared enough burdens already, and while they're strong enough to shoulder them together, they know they can't lose focus.

* * *

The time finally comes when they meet Kakashi again. They are fifteen when they see him - he's alone, and he's trailing the backs of two Akatsuki members. At first, they're merely confused - Konoha knows better than to send a lone jōnin after an Akastuki pair. Even the three of them are under orders not to engage them unless absolutely necessary.

They've wandered too close to an important laboratory, and Orochimaru knows only too well that he is somewhere on their list of targets. All the more so for having possession of Naruto; although they know better. Orochimaru has  _ possession _ of nothing. The day will come when he's no longer of any use to them.

A minute of observation turns confusion into fuming anger, and Kurama howls so loudly that they all feel it - Naruto cannot contain it and doesn't even try. When the attention of the Akatsuki members -  _ Deidara and Tobi,  _ Sakura's mind helpfully supplies - is on them, Kakashi draws a sword and strikes.

Naruto and Sakura surge forward in an instant. Chakra boils from Sakura's hands and she hurls it like sticky bombs; when the almost-invisible substance touches the ground around the Akatsuki, it explodes. Deidara shouts something in delight, but Naruto's ears are full of snarling Bijuu and the familiar burning-comforting-molten feeling of transformation overtakes his body. He feels one tail sprout like a nerve ripped from his spine, and he lets Kurama's snarling issue forth from his own throat.

Behind them, Sasuke summons lightning into his hand and then sends it shooting across the impromptu battlefield, striking Deidara with crackling little needles. Tobi turns translucent - it all passes through him.

As nervous as they've been about fighting the Akastuki, they follow their attack pattern without hesitation - and then everything comes to a screeching, reeling halt when, as Deidara taunts them, Kakashi slips in behind him and draws his blade across Deidara's throat. He cuts so deep that he almost decapitates the man; blood sprays out violently, and Naruto comes to a stop on all fours, one tail swaying, as it soaks him from crown to claw. Ghostly red eyes fix on their erstwhile sensei.

Tobi lets out a shriek and runs. Tension flexes through Naruto’s body, barely restraining the urge to give chase. Behind him, he feels Kurama flicker against Sakura’s will and she gives in - runs after the fleeing Akatsuki member with a feral grin and hurled chakra bombs. Slowly, Naruto senses Sasuke approach.

Blood splatters the ground at Kakashi’s feet as he flicks off as much as he can from his sword, and then he meets their gaze with one cold, black eye. Naruto’s breath stops for a moment; Sakura is right. She’s always been right.  _ We should have taken him with us. _ Kakashi would have been perfect with them.

He  _ will _ be perfect with them. Their missing fourth cornerstone.

“Kakashi-sensei,” Sasuke intones, stepping in even closer. His hand goes to Naruto’s back as he comes level with them, trailing fingers up his shoulder blade to the back of his neck; the corrosive chakra coils up from Naruto’s skin and bites into Sasuke’s. Little bubbles of blood rise up from the capillaries as they burst - and Naruto lets out a low growl, where he lingers on all fours. The partial transformation fades, but his eyes remain red and he leans in against Sasuke like an obedient pet. Sasuke smirks.

Kakashi’s gaze doesn’t drop from Sasuke’s for a moment. “I’m not your sensei.” His voice is cracked, like he’s forgotten how to use it.

Their thoughts, combined, flow back in time to when Naruto almost refused, and with the hand that isn’t slowly digging fingertips into Naruto’s flesh, Sasuke reaches out to him. “You could be again.”

Slowly rising his to his feet, purring softly as Sasuke’s grip tightens on him, Naruto offers Kakashi a hand as well. “Please, Sensei?” he asks, and what remains of Kakashi’s expression darkens.

“I belong to Konoha.”

Sakura is coming back, and they can tell by the pulse of her chakra against Kurama’s that she was unsuccessful in her hunt; she feels the mirrored flash as Kakashi sends a sheet of white chakra down his sword to rid it of the remaining blood and sheaths it. A moment later, he’s gone.

They can track his path away, moving with inhuman speed and faint trickles of chakra, but he’s beyond even Sasuke’s realm of sight in seconds. By the time Sakura makes it back to them, there’s not even a consideration of following him.

When she reaches them, she doesn’t slow down. Sasuke goes tumbling past Naruto, who only turns his head to watch. For several minutes he just observes them scuffle, their frustration bleeding out through the threads of Kurama that connect them, until finally he hurls himself into the fray as well.

Kakashi-sensei belongs to  _ them. _

He’ll see it one day.

* * *

The day that Orochimaru dies is the same day he meets Kurama in person. Naruto and Sakura aren’t there the moment that he locks Sasuke down and attempts to steal his body, but they feel it flash across the bond that they’ve forged on the back of Kurama’s power. It’s like being throttled.

When they collapse, they find themselves drawn into the same non-reality that Orochimaru controls to overtake new hosts. The Sannin is not prepared to face all three of them at once defending Sasuke’s mind - all nine ethereal tails flitting in and out of sight behind them, Kurama lowers his eyes to their level and  _ snarls, _ and despite there being no air in the room of mental construct, it shudders.

Orochimaru is in pieces by the time Kabuto arrives, and Naruto is glowing with red chakra, streaked in viscera. His fangs are bared and dripping with blood. On either side of him, Sakura and Sasuke are coiled and ready, and their eyes too burn a matching red.

There is no mercy left in them, and Kabuto’s entrails join Orochimaru’s in painting the walls.

* * *

They drift, for a while, before finally the Akatsuki approach them. They’re after Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke know only too well, and they quickly close in around Naruto to protect him.

The woman with blue hair casts her judgement, and offers them their robes with red clouds. Sakura can think of no better way to protect Naruto from them than to know what they’re doing; Sasuke sees them as merely a stepping stone to Itachi. Konan’s robes are accepted, and when the three of them set them loose around their shoulders, they do so - as they do everything - together.

* * *

The day they kill Itachi is another thing they do together. Their strength is Sasuke’s strength - and with Sakura and Naruto at his sides, the battle is violent but brief.

Itachi smiles at them as he dies.

They don’t understand, but Sakura and Naruto carry Sasuke’s burden as if it’s theirs, and together they push onwards.

* * *

Konoha is not destroyed, the day that Pein attacks. Kakashi tears through enemies like a sword through tissue paper, and when he faces one of Nagato’s proxies, he finds himself gravely wounded - but he destroys it utterly.

There are moments, as the fight rages on, where he thinks that they might finally have lost.

When, at the end of it, he feels the surge of sickening chakra and hears a roar he’d hoped to never hear again, Kakashi snaps.

The Kyūbi has torn apart his fragile family too many times.

Kakashi meets his three genin on the battlefield, and though what little heart that remains in him mourns, he draws his sword, feels Konoha step back from him, and prepares to kill them in turn.  _ Friend-Killer _ perhaps, he will have to be again.

It turns out to be needless.

They meet him right back, and when he unsheathes his blade, they turn their back to him. Beyond them, now facing their strength, what remains of Pein’s bodies line up. Kakashi wonders how fast they would react, wonders who amongst them would actually die, if he was to put his sword through one of his former students’ backs in that moment.

He does not do so.

And instead, Pein falls to blade and claw and seething chakra, and when they hunt down the source and face Nagato in his broken state, Konan does not get to plead their case. No bright speeches are exchanged. There is no offer of sweet and hollow hope.

Sasuke snarls at him while Sakura sneers at his weakness, and Naruto lashes his chakra tails in preparation to pounce. A sword emerges from the side of his face like a parasite breaking free, and behind him Kakashi resolves into visibility. His sword runs clean through Nagato’s head, from the base of his skull up through his mouth and cheek, and Nagato gives one small noise of choked protest.

Kakashi’s sword sweeps up. Nagato’s head splits, and blood stains his white hair darker crimson than the eyes of his enemies.

Konan goes still in shock, and moments later Kakashi’s sword has cut clean through her neck, and her body crumples while her head bounces and rolls.  _ “You talk too much.” _

And again, circling him, they all offer Kakashi their hands. He will always be their sensei, no matter what he says. He stabs his sword into the ground, and the look he regards them with is two parts contempt and one part pain.

He  _ lost _ them, he says. He lost them, and he’s lost too many times. They can never be anything more than agony waiting to happen.

It takes time, as they leap at him as a collective, but eventually they make him understand.

_ You never lost us, _ they say, while words fail to convey what can be spoken only in action. Finally, he concedes to them and Kurama rumbles deeply when they meet, for the first time.

They tell him the truth of what Itachi lived, of Konoha’s betrayal, in whispers and snarls and the softest of rages, and it is the final seal in a bond that they should have chased years ago. Kakashi shudders with anger and grief and they soothe him as best they can. Promise his place in wreaking their vengeance upon Danzō - upon everyone and everything that ever stole from them.

Kakashi learns, that day, the same lesson that he hadn’t realised he'd taught them all those years ago. His grief is their grief. Their burdens are his burdens.

His strength - he promises them - is their strength.

* * *

The day Danzō pays for his crimes, he does not face a boy lost in rage and sorrow. There is no prior fight, and there is no distraction from a desperate and broken team. The day Danzō faces Team Seven, there are red clouds to warn him of his impending doom. The day Danzō dies, he is met at the waterfall by a Sasuke who has learned the value not only of power, but the value of weakness - he is met by a Sasuke who can no longer be crippled by the overwhelming wrongs done on his behalf - he is met by a Sasuke who lets his teammates catch him before he can fall.

Danzō faces a seething Sakura who has given everything for Team Seven and would give everything again - he faces a Sakura who has let herself be ripped open and filled every void with Sasuke’s hatred and Naruto’s bloodlust and Kakashi’s cruelty. He faces a Sakura who has absolutely no fear left - a Sakura who would - who  _ could _ \- destroy the moon in a heartbeat if Team Seven asked.

Danzō faces a Naruto who has come to be in perfect harmony with the monster sealed in his skin - he faces a Naruto who is no longer merely human, and may have never been in the first place. He faces a Naruto who still feels so deeply that he can force others to feel too - and he faces a Naruto who has no hope left to share.

Danzō faces a Kakashi who has lost everything so often that he'd rather throw it all away himself - he faces a Kakashi who has trusted every torn shred left of his heart to the three genin at his flank, who has no love to give to Konoha or anyone else or even himself. Danzō faces a Kakashi with no compassion and a taste for blood - he faces a Kakashi without mercy.

On the day that Danzō dies, he faces a Team Seven that has sacrificed their humanity for power.

On the day Danzō dies, he learns too late that the Izanagi will not save him - and instead, on the day that Danzō dies (again, and again, and again, and again), he meets feral joy, face to face, and learns a hundred new ways perish.

* * *

The time comes, of course, when Obito tries to collect Naruto. The fight is short, but it's bitter.

Kakashi wakes them, faint red filigree in his non-Sharingan eye as he runs his fingers through their hair without a word; they come to in equal silence, and the warning slips between Kurama's chakra and they all rise to their feet. Kakashi is still adjusting to the strange, oscillating presence and the new way of communicating - but Kurama's claw in his back is his strength too, and even with all that he's done, he's never felt stronger.

If everything he touches turns to ash, then he needs as much power as he can get to defend what matters to him. And their strength is his strength.

He's never  _ been  _ stronger.

* * *

The last time someone tries to take Kakashi's family away from him, he stands bound to their sides, and he forsakes every single moral he's ever had to keep them there.

The last time someone tries to kill Kakashi's family, there is not enough left of them to even remember.

**Author's Note:**

> Heyoooooooo my favourite bitches, guess who wrote this instead of working on _any of his WIPs_  
>  That's right it's this motherfucker right here. Anyway, have this au instead of an actual fic update ENJOY
> 
> ~~Comments are love~~


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